How to let customers "sync" an old IMAP account with their new cpanel email account?

We often get customers who are transferring from another hosting provider. This is simple when the old host uses cpanel, but is a completely manual process if the old host uses a different platform.

We would like to allow customers to "sync" their own email accounts off their old server. Is this possible?

For example, something like this:

1. Customer logs into cpanel and creates their new email account.
2. Customer clicks "synchronize email account" and gets a page where they can:
3. Enter their OLD email account hostname, un and password.
4. Click "synchronize now" button and the system goes and gets a copy of all folders and emails off the old mail server (using IMAP) and puts them onto their new cpanel email account.

This would greatly simplify our lives, and allow much better customer service for those new customers who did not previous use cpanel.

Thanks!

I am an eNom ETP.Sign up today if you want an eNom.com domain reseller account from a reliable provider.* We now provide support and service to over 3250 happy resellers!

The idea here is that the customer's should be able to transfer/sync over their old email without needing to become knowledgeable with mail server administration.

99.99% of our customers would have no idea what "maldir" means. However, if you told them to input their old mail server hostname, username and password, and then click a "go" button, they would have no problem.

I am an eNom ETP.Sign up today if you want an eNom.com domain reseller account from a reliable provider.* We now provide support and service to over 3250 happy resellers!

I have little doubt that emails can be synced from different mailserver platform to cPanel. This is because the different structure of mail folders used by different different mail servers. But if cPanel is able to provide tool to sync the emails from different mail platforms then I think it would be great benefit for all of us. It will not just help us to sync the emails but also save our time for the manual migration.

Staff Member

There are no native tools that will allow individual users to sync email data from other IMAP servers at this time. The current advice is generally to use the "imapsync" utility, but this might be a bit too complicated for an average user, as you mentioned. Please submit your idea as a feature request via: